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Greece Parliament Ratifies Bill Criminalizing Armenian Genocide Deni

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  • Greece Parliament Ratifies Bill Criminalizing Armenian Genocide Deni

    GREECE PARLIAMENT RATIFIES BILL CRIMINALIZING ARMENIAN GENOCIDE DENIAL

    Jurist
    Sept 10 2014

    Parliament of Greece [official website] on Tuesday ratified a bill
    that criminalizes the denial of the Armenian genocide. The revised
    bill is titled "Fight Against Xenophobia," and it was adopted by a
    vote of 54-42, with 3 parliament members abstaining from the vote.

    With Thursday's vote, Greece joined [Armen press report] Switzerland
    and Slovakia to become the third state to criminalize the denial of
    the World War I era Armenian genocide [NYT backgrounder]. A violation
    [Ria Novosti report] of the new bill is punishable by up to three
    years in prison and a fine not to exceed 30,000 Euros. Further,
    parties or associations that support racism may be deprived of
    government funding for a period of one to six months and receive
    fines up to 100,000 Euros.

    In recent years, Armenian nationals have fought with the international
    community to recognize the killings of 1.5 Armenian citizens that
    occurred approximately 100 years ago and allegedly resulted in the
    killing of 1.5 million Armenian citizens during World War I, known as
    the Armenian genocide [JURIST news archive]. Turkey has long disputed
    the numbers, alleging the killings were a result of a civil war that
    took place after the collapse of the Ottoman empire. In December 2009,
    the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled [JURIST report] that
    prosecutions for denying that the killing of Armenians by the Ottoman
    Empire in 1915 was a genocide are an attack on freedom of expression.

    In 2009, Turkey and Armenia signed [JURIST report] a landmark accord
    in Switzerland to normalize relations between the two countries and
    open up borders. In 2010, a spokesperson for the US State Department
    stated that the Obama administration opposed a vote [JURIST report]
    before the House of Representatives on a resolution [HR 252 materials]
    branding the World War I-era killings of Armenians by Turkish forces
    as genocide.

    http://jurist.org/paperchase/2014/09/greece-parliament-ratifies-bill-criminalizing-armenian-genocide-denial.php

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